


"Mr Barrow Has The Flu"

by chiaroscure



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Friendship, Gen, suicide attempt references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:14:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23719534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiaroscure/pseuds/chiaroscure
Summary: Daisy has been told that Thomas "has the flu," but something about the situation doesn't sit right with her. She sets out to discover why.
Relationships: Thomas Barrow & Daisy Mason
Comments: 18
Kudos: 169





	"Mr Barrow Has The Flu"

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Once_More_With_Feeling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Once_More_With_Feeling/gifts).



“As Mr Barrow has the flu, Andrew, you and I will serve dinner this evening. That should not be a problem for us.”

Daisy is wiping down the servants’ hall table as Mr Carson informs Andy of this. She straightens up in time to catch Andy nodding mutely.

“Thom — Mr Barrow has the flu?” she demands. Mr Carson raises his eyebrows at her impertinence, but that hasn’t been enough to stop her for a few years now. “I can’t remember the last time Mr Barrow was ill; how’d he manage to come down with something now? It’s not the season for it.”

Mr Carson puffs himself up and glares, but fails either to reprimand or answer her, so she turns to Andy who is diligently not meeting her eye. He looks a bit pale, now she thinks about it; hopefully he’s not caught whatever Thomas has too. It’s always a nightmare when somebody gets sick; half the household is bound to follow.

It is _odd_ that nobody is saying anything at all. Not even anything dismissive.

It occurs to Daisy to wonder if something else isn’t going on here. She is opening her mouth to press further when Mrs Patmore shouts at her to hurry up and come back to the kitchen, so she grudgingly drops it for now. She tries one last time to catch Andy’s eye, but he is being stubborn about it. Annoyed, she makes a mental note to ask him about it later.

*

“Mr Carson says Thomas has the flu,” Daisy comments nonchalantly while rolling out a pie crust. Mrs Patmore probably thinks Daisy doesn’t notice that she freezes for a split second before recovering herself, but Daisy is on the alert after Mr Carson and Andy’s strange silence a minute ago.

“Yes, apparently it’s a bad one. Best he keeps away while he recovers. Have you finished with that yet?”

Daisy picks the raw crust up and plops it into the pie pan. “Where’d he get the flu, do you suppose?”

Mrs Patmore takes the pan away a little too quickly, turning her back to Daisy so her face isn’t visible. “He’s been off at all those interviews lately; I imagine he picked it up from someone at one of them. Lord knows what sorts of people he’s had to shake hands with, going all about like that.”

“Still funny, in August,” Daisy says. Mrs Patmore’s back is still to her. “Not usual to get flu in summer, is it? And it came on so sudden; I just saw Thomas this morning, and he seemed healthy enough then.”

“Flu’s like that sometimes,” Mrs Patmore replies, voice taking on a sharp quality that means she is going to demand that Daisy stop asking questions if she continues. “And don’t tell me you’ve never been ill in summer; I’ve known you more than half your life; I’ve seen you ill in odd months. He’ll be well again soon enough; don’t trouble your head about it.”

Mrs Patmore turns back to push the now-filled pie into Daisy’s waiting hands crossly. Daisy tries to search her face for as long as Mrs Patmore will hold her gaze, but there’s nothing for it; all she can see is brittle unease and the end of a conversation. Reluctantly, she puts the pie in the oven and continues preparing the evening meal in silence. Mrs Patmore does not say a single word for the rest of the afternoon.

*

It is night by the time Daisy is able to catch Andy alone, just before he goes up the stairs. She steps casually in front of him to block his path, feigning ignorance as to where he is headed. It is not as if he _announced_ his plan to go to bed, after all.

“How was serving with Mr Carson?” she inquires, attempting tonelessness. Andy smiles brightly, as always, but there’s something artificial about it. Once again, he won’t quite meet her eye.

“It went well! I didn’t mind. I don’t mind helping while Mr Barrow is ill. Mr Carson doesn’t either. Everything’s alright.”

Daisy frowns at that. She’s not always the most perceptive person in the house, but she is paying attention now, and she knows that Andy is making too much of his indifference. He makes an attempt to look her in the face, but aborts it immediately.

“Have you seen Mr Barrow since he fell ill?” she asks keeping her voice light. Andy swallows hard and takes a strange, shaky breath, but he sounds more or less normal when he replies.

“Yeah; he’s…he’s very poorly. I doubt he’ll be working again for a few weeks at least. Dr Clarkson says he’ll be alright though, so no need to worry.”

“I didn’t know Dr Clarkson came. Is it really that bad?”

Andy blanches and does finally look at her. She searches his face, aware at the back of her mind that she is not keeping up her attempt at normalcy very well anymore.

“Mr, erm, Mr Carson wanted Dr Clarkson to see him,” Andy stutters. “Since it came on so quickly.”

Daisy is almost sure Andy is lying about something here by now, but, to her frustration, she still has nothing to go on in figuring out exactly what he is covering up.

“Why weren’t Miss Baxter at supper tonight?” Daisy asks, for the sake of asking _something_. It is the only other unusual thing she has noticed today, other than the strangely heavy mood that has descended over the servants’ hall since this morning. It isn’t much of a clue; Daisy doesn’t know much about Miss Baxter, but she seems to be as close with Thomas as anyone is, so it could be relevant.

“She’s taking care of Mr Barrow upstairs.”

“In his bedroom?”

“I…yeah. He’s…I mean, he’s quite ill.”

It’s a poor response, but a predictable one. Daisy crosses her arms.

“Why is Miss Baxter in his room if it’s the flu he’s got? Shouldn’t she keep away from him to keep from catching it too?”

Andy starts a reply but thinks better of whatever he was going to say. “Somebody’s got to keep an eye on him. Dr Clarkson said someone needs to make sure his fever doesn’t get too high.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to spare a hall boy? Her Ladyship won’t be happy to have Miss Baxter spending so much time with somebody with such a bad flu, will she?”

Andy shuffles his feet, looking intensely uncomfortable. “I don’t know. Maybe Dr Clarkson thought Miss Baxter was better with things than any of the hall boys.”

Daisy does not say anything to that. It is probably true, but still, it doesn’t quite make sense. This is not how people usually are about the flu; you don’t send a lady’s maid up to tend to a servant when whatever he’s got might be contagious, even if he is an under-butler. Andy gestures awkwardly at the stairs when Daisy’s silence has stretched on long enough for him to decide she is not going to continue her questioning.

“I was going to go to bed…”

Daisy’s frown deepens, but after a moment she steps aside so Andy can pass. He half runs up the stairs, as if he has narrowly escaped some trap. None of this sits right with her, but since no one seems willing to outright tell her what is wrong, she supposes she will just have to accept the nagging uncertainty at the back of her mind. Sighing, she lets her arms drop and returns to the kitchen to finish tidying up for the night.

She realizes that her palms are sweating, though she would not know how to answer if anyone were to ask why.

*

Mrs Patmore is more or less back to normal by noon the next day, and Daisy doesn’t see enough of the others who might know anything to say what their moods are like. She tries to joke with Andy a bit, but he still seems drawn, so she backs off. She asks Mrs Patmore if she should put together a tray to send up to Thomas, but she says no. That doesn’t make sense to her, but she doesn’t ask, as she is not eager to upset Mrs Patmore’s mood again so soon.

Miss Baxter misses lunch, but she comes to dinner. Mrs Hughes is at lunch, but not dinner. This seems interesting to Daisy, but she’s not sure who to ask about it, so she keeps quiet.

Things continue on like this for a half week without any further hints as to what is happening in the attic. Daisy is almost ready to accept that Thomas really has simply come down with some horrible flu and isn’t eating because of stomach upset when, one day, Andy comes barging into the kitchen beaming like he’s won the lottery, astonishing both Daisy and Mrs Patmore.

“Can I get a bowl of broth and some water for Mr Barrow, along with Miss Baxter’s lunch tray? Maybe some bread for him too! He’s up to eating some lunch today, apparently!”

“Oh, my word!” Mrs Patmore exclaims, clutching a hand to her chest in shock. “Yes, Daisy warm some chicken broth, will you? I’m sure you’re happy for him, Andy, aren’t you?”

Andy nods enthusiastically, glancing between Mrs Patmore and Daisy as they hurry to prepare the tray. Daisy grins back at him; whatever is going on, it _has_ been an unnaturally long while since Thomas had any food. They put the lunch tray together in record time, and, with one final ecstatic smile at them, Andy whisks it away up the stairs.

Daisy turns, still grinning, to Mrs Patmore, who shakes her head and laughs, “my word, my word,” to herself again.

*

Daisy expects Miss Baxter to be around more again once Thomas starts eating again, but she remains absent. Daisy has never paid so much attention to a lady’s maid’s habits, she contemplates one morning, but then, no one below stairs has ever been quite so spectacularly ill before in her memory.

Andy is in a dazzing good mood. He’s up in the attic at odd hours during the day and has started turning in very early at night, coming back with little bits of vague news about Thomas’s health and state of mind. It does not seem the way someone would act about a person recovering from flu unless they had been on death’s door, but, with the way everyone’s been acting, perhaps that was exactly the situation. If that turns out to be so, Daisy will be put out that no one bothered to tell her as much; she and Thomas started at Downton Abbey the same week, after all; surely there is some broadly understood kinship there. But as she has no proof that she has been kept in the dark about something so serious, she will reserve judgment about how indignant she needs to be until she knows more.

Curiously, when Mrs Patmore declares Thomas ready for solid food again (how she knows this to be true is beyond Daisy, but that’s nothing new), oddly, liver is the first offering. Liver, beef broth, and a small dollop of mash does not seem very appetizing, in Daisy’s opinion, but Mrs Patmore says it is what will be best for Thomas at the moment, so this, like so much else lately, Daisy leaves alone. The next meals are no less strange, but she stops commenting, and starts making the sorts of breads Thomas has shown greater fondness for over the years to send up with his unappealing meals.

If it were someone else sick, Daisy might ask Thomas what sort of ailment a person might be suffering from to need to eat such funny foods. He might not know, but he does have medical training. He has never been the sort to lie to her ostensibly for her own sake, so he might be both able and willing to tell her. But as it is him who is not well, Daisy carries on not knowing.

She starts to make noise about taking him his meals after a while, when the mystery of the situation starts to peeve her again.

“Andy’s meant to be serving tea to the family; I could go instead of him,” she says the first time. But Mrs Patmore huffs, as if it’s a ridiculous offer.

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t go,” she tries again at supper. “I won’t stay long. I’d just be taking him the tray up.”

“I’m not sending you up to the men’s bedrooms; don’t be daft,” Mrs Patmore snipes back. Daisy, though, not to be so easily put off this time, rests her hands on her hips.

“Miss Baxter’s up there, isn’t she? It wouldn’t be improper. Besides, Thomas is ill, and everyone else is down here. What harm could it do?”

Mrs Patmore whacks a spoon on the counter as she hasn’t done at Daisy in years to get her to stop being silly and get back to work. But Daisy’s not so easily frightened now, so she shoots an irritated glance at Andy, who is standing in the doorway, asking him silently to back her up. He just looks at his feet, though, so Daisy sighs in exasperation, resolving to make more of a nuisance of herself every meal until Mrs Patmore finally gives in and lets her go.

“I want to _see_ him, Mrs Patmore!” she says loudly the next night when it is once again time to take Thomas up his supper. “He’s been ill for _ages_ ; I just want to see if he’s alright!”

She realizes belatedly that Miss Baxter is in the kitchen sipping a cup of tea. Daisy hopes she hasn’t startled her with the sharp outburst, but Miss Baxter appears, if anything, to be pleased at Daisy’s conviction.

Mrs Patmore opens her mouth again to tell Daisy to stop it with her whinging about Thomas ( _he’s_ fine _, Daisy; mind your business!_ ), as she did at lunch, but Miss Baxter inserts herself into the building altercation. Her gentle manner is so different from the typical harshness of the kitchen that Mrs Patmore cuts her chastisement off before she gets a chance to really start.

“I think he would like to see you, Daisy,” Miss Baxter says. “Andy told him you were asking after him, and Mr Barrow said he would be pleased for you to visit, if you wanted to.”

Daisy gawks at her as she just smiles and takes another sip of her tea.

“Well, if he said that…” Mrs Patmore trails off. Daisy straightens up excitedly.

“I do want to! I’ll just take him up his tray, then!”

“He’s still not very well,” Miss Baxter cautions her softly, as Daisy goes to take the tray. “He might not want to talk much. I hope you won’t be upset with him if he doesn’t.”

“I won’t bother him; I just want to see how he is,” Daisy beams. “Thank you, Miss Baxter!”

She’s out the kitchen door before anyone can stop her.

Mrs Hughes comes out of Thomas’s room before Daisy can knock at the door, which is unexpected but not really surprising. The last couple of days, Andy has been staying up with Thomas during his dinner so Mrs Hughes and Miss Baxter can take their own meals downstairs, so Daisy expects to do the same this evening in Andy’s place. Mrs Hughes pauses a moment upon noticing that it is Daisy who has come up, but she smiles warmly at her. 

“Ah, Daisy. Go on in, Mr Barrow will be pleased to see you.”

She speaks in hushed tones, and Daisy wonders if Thomas is napping. She’s not sure what she is expected to do if he is, but Mrs Hughes touches her shoulder on her way past without further comment, so Daisy assumes she will be able to figure it out. Typically people give her more instructions than she needs if there’s any chance of her to making a mess of a situation, so she takes heart in not receiving any now, and pushes through the door Mrs Hughes has left ajar.

Thomas is not asleep, she finds. He is sitting up in bed unoccupied, presumably waiting for her — or, more likely, for Andy. Something about his demeanor reminds her of how Andy was the first few days after Thomas fell ill, in fact, though he is less agitated than Andy was. The way he won’t meet her eyes when he sees it’s her and fiddles with the edge of his sheet gives her pause; she decides on the spot not to exclaim over either his long sickness or his apparent return to health. Instead, she calmly takes the tray over to him without a word. He flicks his gaze up to her as she pulls away then to offer her a tiny smile in thanks.

It’s funny that, if she had to guess, she would say he looks embarrassed.

“Can I sit here?” she asks, gesturing at the blanket-covered armchair in the corner that looks more comfortable than the wooden desk chair. He nods, so she drops down and looks around.

She was here before once, when she took him a meal after he was in that fight at the Thirsk fair a few years ago. Not much has changed since then; it is still sparsely furnished with personal effects, but it feels like his just as it did then. The main difference is that his bookcase has been relocated to accommodate a second cot against the far wall. Daisy wonders, bewildered, if Miss Baxter has been sleeping there at night.

“Andy said you’re feeling better,” she tries, as Thomas spoons up his broth. He pauses to glance at her again.

“Better,” he replies slowly. Daisy gets the feeling that there is a _but not well_ implied in his answer. She nods to show she understands him.

She lets that sit there for a few moments as he goes back to his bowl so that she can just look at him. His hair is styled and he is shaved; his nails appear to be freshly trimmed; his pajamas look fresh — he is not languishing in fever. That is good, but he does look awfully pale, and there is something deliberate in the way he moves that makes her think his strength is not what it should be. It’s interesting that Andy has been so happy every time he comes back from visiting Thomas since he first fell ill; there is something shrunken and sad about Thomas now that is at odds with Andy’s recent cheer. This is not how she thinks of Thomas being.

Now she reflects on it though, his sadness is not new. He has perhaps not been himself for some time.

And still there’s the embarrassment. She does not know what to make of the shame she can feel coming off of him. People don’t get embarrassed from having the flu, not normally. What kind of sickness is this? She can find no signs of cough, or of head cold, or of upset stomach on him. Only the weakness, the pallor, the sadness, and shame. What is she missing?

“Thomas,” she says sharply, and he looks up at her. She stares at him, staring back at her. A desperate hope is for a moment plain in his face before he covers it up again with meek neutrality.

“I had a fight with the grocer,” she tells him. She has no idea of _why_ she tells him this, and, based on the confusion that flashes across his expression, neither does he, but that pleases her. Confusion is an improvement over sadness. “Do you want to hear about it?”

He swallows his mouthful of broth, hesitates, then nods. She beams, and launches into her story.

*

Nobody makes a fuss when Thomas starts to return to the servants’ hall for meals, so Daisy doesn’t either. Her own mood has come to mirror Andy’s somewhat since she began taking Thomas his tea, in that she finds herself inexplicably delighted at the chance to talk to him, now he has lost some of the shyness of her first visit. He is different around all of them at once then he is around just her, but that has always been true, so that’s no surprise, really.

Daisy wants to ask him about his flu now that he’s well again, but the time is never quite right. It’s Lady Mary’s wedding, and then he’s been offered a new job, and she’s always busy anyhow, so it never quite happens.

“You’ve got to write to me; I want to know what it’s like working somewhere else,” she tells him before he leaves for his new position. She can at least write, even if she hasn’t managed to talk much to him.

“Planning on leaving too, are you?” he replies with mock disdain.

“Thomas I’m _serious_ ; I’ll be angry with you if you don’t.”

He laughs but she’s not joking, and she makes him promise before she’ll let go of his sleeve.

Three days after he goes, a small packet of letters arrives from him. Mr Carson hands them out with the rest of the post over breakfast, and has to call Daisy in from the kitchen to give her hers. Mrs Hughes smiles at her like she’s done well as Daisy tucks the envelop into her apron pocket. She writes back as soon as she has a second to spare.

*

Thomas has been back at Downton for two weeks when Daisy quite unexpectedly finds herself sitting in companionable silence with him alone in the mid-morning quiet of the courtyard. It’s cold because it’s January, but the sun is out, so she doesn’t mind. She sat down at the table to pick a splinter out of her thumb when he came out for a smoke, which he is about a third finished with by the time she bothers saying anything.

“Did you really have the flu?” she asks. “Before you left?”

She didn’t plan to say it, but it’s too late to take it back now. He looks at her sharply, but takes a thoughtful drag on the cigarette between his fingers.

“No.”

She’s glad he says it plainly. It would be somehow insulting if he were to dance around it. 

“What did happen?”

He takes a long breath and taps some ash onto the ground, angling his body more toward her. “I’ll tell you if you really want to know, but you can’t be touchy about it after.”

Her palms are sweaty again despite the chill in the air; her heart is beating fast, but she’s neither frightened nor excited. “I won’t be. I want to know.”

He nods slowly. “I was very tired, so I did some harm…to myself. Which I hoped would be serious enough to…stop…everything.”

He looks so calm as he says it, but he’s watching her, searching for a reaction. She’s not sure what he might be seeing; her face feels numb suddenly.

“You tried to kill yourself, you mean.”

It’s not really a question the way she says it, but he nods to confirm it anyway. Her throat feels very dry, almost like it’s trying to choke her, and she feels a few tears run down her face. So, crying, presumably is the reaction he is seeing from her. She wipes her nose on her sleeve, annoyed at herself for making a fuss when she told him she wouldn’t.

“I don’t understand, how…are you…how did…why…?”

She stares at him urgently with burning eyes as if she has asked a proper question instead of stammering nonsense at him. He takes another long drag on the cigarette and she can see his hand is shaking; she feels guilty now for springing this conversation on him, when he just came out for a quick smoke.

He’s not looking at her when he goes to respond, instead inspecting his cold-pink fingers on the table in front of him like they’re very interesting, although he might actually be staring through his hand and not at it all; Daisy can’t tell.

“Trying to find a new job wasn’t going well,” he says, his voice steady despite how unsteady the world is. “There’s not a lot out there in service these days. People want just the one man, for being a butler and a valet and a chauffeur, and I can’t really drive, and — well, in any case, there’s not much. I don’t have any other skills; I’ve been here too long, haven’t I? But it weren’t as if I could just stay here; everyone made that perfectly clear to me, and nobody likes me in the first place, so that were out.”

He interrupts himself to take another drag on his cigarette, then puts it out. “Well, I didn’t _think_ anybody liked me, anyway. It certainly seemed that way to me.”

He sits quietly for an indefinable amount of time, fingers moving like he wants to pull out another cigarette but won’t for some reason. Daisy is not quite sure if she ought to say something the longer the silence goes on, but Thomas, still not looking at her, gives a little jerk of his head and says, “Mostly I were just lonely, you know?”

He raises his eyes up to hers again, which makes her realize that she’s still crying, and she sniffles. Thomas has never seemed lonely to her; even looking at him now he seems so much a fixture of her life — of all their lives — that she can hardly picture him being bothered by being alone. How could he be so lonely as to do something like what he did? She can’t wrap her head around it.

There is suddenly a horrible feeling of emptiness in her chest, a great, aching piece of nothing where everyone she could have loved but didn’t, everyone who could have loved her but didn’t, everyone she loved and lost, and everything she’s ever wanted but couldn’t have should be. It’s probably always there, but it’s not too bad for her most of the time; Daisy is good at not dwelling on things like that. But once in a while it hurts, and she’s never really thought about it much but perhaps everybody has their own bit of nothing tucked away in their chests, and perhaps some people’s are much worse to them than hers is to her. For a second, she feels like the ground has fallen out from under her.

She nods. Vigorously.

The corners of Thomas’s mouth quirk up, but his eyes look somehow sadder for her nodding.

“You could have made friends,” Daisy tells him with conviction. “I didn’t know you were so lonely, but everybody would’ve been friendly if they’d known. I know they would have.”

Thomas’s face does something that makes her feel she’s said the wrong thing, but he fixes it quickly and just shakes his head. “I tried, but it were too late for that. I spent too long making enemies on purpose for anybody to be happy to let me try again just like that. People give up, or I gave up, and people left, and it just started to seem silly to expect it would ever be any different. And I knew it wouldn’t be different somewhere else either; even if I were nicer and kept to myself I still wouldn’t have anybody. Not really. Not at the places I were applying to work at. I’m not very good at having friends.”

She wants to argue with him about that, but, while she has a long way to go, she’s better at holding her tongue strategically than she once was. She can tell she can’t just say meaningless kindnesses to him about this; Thomas is smart, smarter than she is, and he’ll have thought about this much, much longer than she has.

And he’s right. She can admit it to herself without much reflection. Thomas is reserved and he’s nasty to people, and he always has been. He’s been less prickly to her than he has to just about anybody else, but that’s not honestly saying much. He’s right that he hasn’t been good at making friends, or at keeping the few he ever had.

“Why not?” she asks finally.

He shrugs. “Part of it’s just who I am, I think. But it’s also easier to hold up to people being unkind to you all the time if you know you can be just as unkind back — or first.”

“Are people unkind to you?”

He makes a noise like a desiccated laugh. “They have been.”

“Who? People before you started working here?”

“And people after.”

That raises a lot of questions itself, but the one she voices first is, “why?”

His mouth opens and stays that way wordlessly for several long seconds as he looks at her. She watches, tense, until eventually he loosens his shoulders and composes his face again.

“I’m not going to talk about that right now. Some other time, though, maybe, if you’re up for it? I’m sure we’ve both got things to do at the minute. And besides, the reason’s not a sad thing in itself — or _I_ don’t think it is, at least. I don’t want it to get muddled up with the rest of this.”

He’s looking a little more cheerful now than he was a second ago, which makes _Daisy_ feel a little more cheerful too. He does perhaps seem a bit anxious that she might turn him down for that chat later, but of course she won’t.

“‘Course, Thomas, that’d be lovely.” Her voice sounds thick, but she’s smiling too. She’s not sure it’s alright to smile just now, especially with tears still wet on her cheeks, but he doesn’t seem to mind. “Just, are you…alright? Now, I mean. You’ve got a job, but are you still lonely? Are people…have people been kinder to you?”

He smiles back at her properly, in a way that reaches his eyes. “I’m much better than I was. And people’ve been kinder too. Shame it took such a fuss to set things right, though.”

His voice sharpens, though the impact is somewhat lessened by his quick glance at her to see if she’s taken the dark almost-joke the way he meant it. It doesn’t seem like something to joke about to her, but he sounds so much like himself that she grins. 

“That’s good,” she says. “I don’t want you to be lonely. You can always come into the kitchen to get in me way if you like, even if Mrs Patmore shouts at me for it. I don’t mind.”

“I thought I said that you couldn’t get touchy about it if I told you,” he sneers, but fails to hide the slight tremor in his voice completely. He stands, so she does as well; he’s right that they both have things to get on with doing.

“Right, go on then, Mr Barrow.” She clicks her heels against the courtyard pavement, standing up straight like she’s a parlormaid at attention even as she wipes her face roughly with her sleeve. “Sorry to distract you from your important butler things.”

“Cheeky.” He rolls his eyes, but passes her a clean handkerchief. “And thank you. For asking.”

He turns and goes back inside without waiting for a response, which is for the best. Daisy’s not sure what else she might have said. She’s never really known what to say to people in situations like this. This seems to have gone well though, somehow, for what it turned out to be.

She lets out a shaky breath that clouds in the winter air before going back in herself. Thomas’s handkerchief remains folded in her fingers. She puts it in her pocket for the time being, but she’s quite sure she’ll need it at some point in the day yet, when she gets a moment to go over all this in her head again.

*

A half a week’s gone by, and Daisy thinks she’s been keeping her promise not to be “touchy” about what Thomas told her so far. It helps that he’s been perfectly ordinary to her. A bit more open, maybe, but just a bit, and that’s it.

She and Mrs Patmore are parceling out jars of stock for later use in the early afternoon when Thomas sticks his head in the kitchen door.

“Daisy, can you spare a moment?”

Mrs Patmore nods, so Daisy puts down the jar she’s holding and follows Thomas out into the hall, shivering just a bit — it’s cooler outside the kitchen than in. He takes them in the direction of the office, and, once there, pushes the door not quite closed. She regards him for a moment. He seems in a fine enough mood, he’s just a bit tense, maybe, and he doesn’t start talking as soon as she thinks he probably ought to.

“What’s this about, then?” she demands with a hand on her hip.

*

In three minutes flat, Daisy’s back in the kitchen, patting her hair distractedly.

“Well? What did Mr Barrow want?” Mrs Patmore asks.

Daisy returns to her pot of stock before spinning to glare in accusation at Mrs Patmore.

“Nobody ever tells me _anything_ , do they? You’d think I’d have at least wanted to know _that_.”

She huffs and turns back to her jars without further comment. Evidently there is a great deal she doesn’t know about Thomas, but she intends to find out at least _some_ of it next week at the village pub, where he’s promised to take her for lunch so she can ask and tell him whatever she pleases. She’s determined that they’re going to be friends again, and _properly_ this time, which means that she is going to have a lot of questions she’ll need him to answer sooner rather than later.

She’s looking forward to it.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr at sinaesthete.tumblr.com


End file.
